


early birds

by rythyme (pugglemuggle)



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bouncer Lio Fotia, Firefighter Galo Thymos, Flirting, Fluff, Galo has a dog, Kissing, Lio Fotia Swears A Lot, M/M, Meet-Cute, Morosexual Lio Fotia, Pining, Some minor peril, mentions of head injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22785181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pugglemuggle/pseuds/rythyme
Summary: Lio works night shifts at a dance club. Galo, his neighbor, works mornings at the fire department. Somehow, their schedules overlap just  enough for Lio to developa thingfor this idiot.(Or, a meet-cute followed by several inopportune run-ins as Lio slowly succumbs to his morosexual tendencies.)
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 35
Kudos: 537





	early birds

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a part of my personal fic challenge, "Fourteen First Dates: The February Fourteen Fandom Challenge". Technically this is like, a week late. But: it's still February. And also it's my own fic challenge, and I make the rules. So. Have this...?
> 
> Not beta read, so any mistakes are my own.

When Lio trudges back to his apartment after a long night working at the club, he really doesn’t expect to run into anyone. It’s 5:30 in the morning, after all. Only people without self-preservation instincts—that is, people like him—are out and about this early. The rest of the world doesn’t work the night shift. 

As he steps onto the landing outside his apartment door, he pulls out his keys and starts trying to figure out which one he’s supposed to use to let himself in. He only moved in a week ago, and he hasn’t figured out yet how to differentiate the keys by touch yet. The silver one opens his apartment, the gold one opens the laundry room, and the less shiny silver one lets him into the tiny storage locker below the apartment building. The thing is, it’s too dark to actually see the fucking key colors. He didn’t leave the porch light on, since it’d probably annoy his neighbors if he left it on all night, and he does actually care about being a good neighbor, even if he hasn’t actually met any of the other residents of the apartment building yet. So, no light. And no idea which key is which.

He tries jamming one of the keys into the door at random. The door doesn’t turn. Fuck. If only his phone wasn’t dead; then he could just turn his flashlight on and find the right key. 

He’s debating how damaging to his pride it would be to try jamming a different key into the lock when he’s nearly blinded by a bright, flashing white LED bobbing up the stairs of the landing. A headlamp? Lio tries to shield his eyes, but it’s too late—his night vision is already ruined.

“Oh, hey! Morning, neighbor!” says a voice behind the headlamp—a voice that sounds way,  _ way _ too loud and chipper for 5:30 A.M. Lio frowns.

“Hi…” he says. And then, suddenly, there’s a dog sniffing at his boots.

A dog. A Shiba Inu, to be precise. A really, really cute Shiba Inu.

“That’s Matoi—she’s super friendly,” says his neighbor’s voice again. 

Normally, Lio has a stronger will when it comes to these kinds of things—but it’s been a long day, and he’s tired, and fuck, this dog is really cute. Lio throws dignity to the wind and crouches low, giving the dog—Matoi—a few pats on the head. She grins at him and closes her eyes, her tongue lolling out of her mouth happily. 

“Cute dog,” Lio says.

“Isn’t she?” his neighbor gushes. “We just finished our morning jog, so she’s a little more mellow than usual. She only just turned three last month. She’s a rescue—well, sort of. Kind of a long story. But she seems to like you! You’re the new guy, right? You just moved in?”

“Um.” Lio tries to process what the question is. He looks up, but that stupid flashing headlamp makes it difficult to see more than a vague human shape holding the Matoi’s leash, so he quickly looks back down at the dog. “Yeah, uh. I moved in last week.”

“Cool! Welcome to the building!”

“Uh. Thanks.” Lio gives Matoi another pat on the head, then gets reluctantly to his feet. “I should… probably get inside. Long day at work.”

“Oh, yeah. Don’t let me hold you up,” the neighbor says quickly. “You work night shifts?”

“Yep.”

“Cool. I’m about to head to my morning shift. But hey—I’m sure I’ll see you around!” The headlamp and the silhouette behind it bob towards the stairs leading to the next floor up. “Oh, and—cool outfit!”

Lio looks down at his work clothes: a studded leather jacket, ripped jeans, and platform boots. “Uh. Thanks?”

But his neighbor is already jogging back up the stairs.

Lio turns back to the lock. He jams another key into the keyhole. It doesn’t fit.

Fuck his entire life.

▲▲▲

Lio doesn’t see the mysterious neighbor or his dog again for another week. As usual, work is exhausting. Turns out breaking up fights, leading drunk people to the bathrooms, and kicking creepy guys out of the club five nights a week is actually pretty tiring work. Lio is a good bouncer, and he likes his job, but fuck, he could really use some time off.

It’s 8:30 PM, and he’s just heading down the stairs of his apartment complex, about to head out to another long night at Burnish, when he almost trips over a very excited Matoi. 

“Oh, crap, sorry about that! She loves being in the way,” says a familiar voice.

Lio looks at Matoi, wagging happily at his feet, and then follows the sound of the voice across the front lawn of the apartment complex until his eyes land on—

Oh. Oh shit.

“Hi,” says the obscenely attractive man in front of him. He’s got a bright blue mohawk with bright blue eyes to match. He’s wearing a black tank top that shows off his biceps and a pair of loose gray sweatpants that sit low over his narrow hips. When Lio looks a little closer, he notices that the sweatpants are covered in a paw-print pattern. 

“Nice pants,” Lio says, because he never learned how to flirt without insulting people. He mentally kicks himself. 

“Haha, thanks,” says Super Hot Neighbor, rubbing the back of his neck. “I was already changed for bed, but Matoi needed to be let out, so…”

Matoi sits on the grass and looks up at Lio, wagging her tail. Lio tries to focus on that instead of the awkward silence stretching between them.

“So, you heading to your night shift?” Super Hot Neighbor asks eventually. “Where do you work?”

Lio swallows. “Yep. Uh. Night club. I’m a bouncer.”

“That explains the outfit,” Super Hot Neighbor says, grinning nearly as bright as his LED headlamp from the other night. “Which night club do you work at?”

“I work at Burnish. It’s—”

“Oh, I know that one! It’s right by my work!”

Lio frowns. The only buildings next to Burnish are a Seven-Eleven, a yoga studio, and—

“I work at the fire station. I’m a firefighter,” Super Hot Neighbor says. “Oh, and my name’s Galo, by the way. I don’t think I actually introduced myself the other night.”

This is—great. Really great. Super Hot Neighbor with the Super Cute Dog is actually a Super Buff Firefighter who works at the fire station literally across the street from the club Lio works at. The world really is conspiring against him. 

Lio is still processing all this when he notices Galo looking at him expectantly. Then he remembers that when someone introduces themselves, they usually expect to get an introduction in return. Fuck.

“Lio,” he says awkwardly. “Uh. Nice to meet you.”

"Nice to meet you too," Galo says back. His thousand-watt smile is back and his voice is earnest, like he really truly means it. Is this guy for real?

Lio nods, because he's not sure what else to do without embarrassing himself further. "Well…" He puts his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. "I should probably head to work."

"Oh! Right. Don't want you to be late." 

"See you around."

He starts walking towards the street. He's probably a good twenty feet away when Galo shouts, "Oh! And I like your pants!"

It's too late at night for shouting, so Lio just gives him a thumbs up and hopes it's sufficient.

It's only when he's starting his motorcycle that he realizes the pants he's wearing are his leather ones—the studded black leather pants that are almost tight enough to cut off circulation, but which he still wears because they make his ass look good. Those leather pants.

Was Galo flirting with him?

No. No that’d be— He wasn’t flirting with him. Right?

Lio couldn’t entirely rule it out. From Lio’s limited experience, Galo seemed like the kind of guy who gave out compliments frequently and generously—but even so, not many straight men compliment him on his vacuum-sealed leather pants. Is he being friendly, or is he being  _ friendly?  _ It’s Lio’s eternal gay conundrum. 

Well, there’s no need to solve the mystery all in one night. With overlaps like these in their schedules, he and Galo are probably going to see a lot more of each other. There will be plenty of time to work out whether Lio has a chance with Super Hot Neighbor. Time yields insight, or whatever.

▲▲▲

Time does not yield any fucking insight.

Galo is just too goddamn nice. Lio keeps running into him around the apartment building—when he’s picking up his mail, or taking out his trash, or doing his laundry— _ god. _ The laundry. Galo walked in while Lio was trying and failing to shove quarters into their coin-operated dryer and Lio is pretty sure he got a generous eyeful of some of Lio’s less family-friendly hang dry-only’s. It was pretty fucking embarassing. Galo either didn’t notice or pretended not to notice, and Lio’s not quite sure which is worse for his prospects.

“You said he seemed kind of oblivious, right?,” Meis says when Lio tells him about it. It’s nine o’clock, and the club is still mostly empty. “Maybe you gotta make it more obvious.”

“Yeah,” Gueira agrees. “Just throw a couple of those things into his laundry next time ‘by mistake’. Pretty classic seduction technique, actually.”

Lio rolls his eyes. “Sounds really subtle.”

Meis laughs. “As if you’re the king of subtlety, Mister ‘You’re hot, let’s get out of here.’” 

“That was a year ago!” Lio protests. “And I was drunk. When are you going to—”

“Let it go? Never.”

Lio groans. 

“But seriously,” says Gueira, “He’s always going out of his way to talk to you, right? And he compliments you a lot? Sounds like he’s into you. Simple as that.”

Lio shakes his head. “You haven’t seen what he’s like.”

“If he’s really that dumb, maybe he needs you to be more direct with him, anyway,” Meis says.

“Maybe.”

Lio isn’t so sure. 

▲▲▲

Because the universe is apparently hell-bent on sabotaging any romantic prospects Lio might have, he runs into Galo again after work that morning. Lio is always a wreck after a long night at work, but tonight there was an entire drunken bachelorette party at Burnish in addition to the usual Friday night rush, and Lio wants nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep for a week. Well, maybe a shower first, and then sleep. He stinks from wearing his leather jacket all night in a hot club, and he swears he can feel his eyeliner sweating off his eyelids. 

So it’s just his luck that he’s almost blinded again by Galo’s flashing LED headlamp as he steps onto the landing by the front door of his apartment.

“Lio!” Galo says. “Hey! You’re home from work?”

“Hey, Galo. Uh. Yeah.” Lio moves his hand up to shield his eyes a little form the LED headlamp.

“Oh! Sorry. Forgot about the light.” Galo reaches up and turns off the headlamp. Lio blinks a few times, trying to get rid of the lingering white spot in his vision. “How was work?”

Lio sighs and tries to muster enough presence of mind to put together a coherent sentence. “Long. Fridays are always kind of a lot, and… There was a bachelorette party, so… yeah. Lots of drunk people.”

“Sounds rough,” Galo says.

“It’s just work.” Lio shrugs. His eyes have begun to adjust to the dark again, and he sees Matoi sitting at Galo’s heels, wagging her tail patiently. She’s wearing a glowing blue and pink safety collar that Lio hasn’t seen before. He gestures down at Matoi. “Is that collar new?”

“Oh, yeah!” Galo grins. “It’s super dark in the mornings, so I want to make sure cars can see her. She’s already had enough scary experiences, haven’t you Matoi?” 

Lio leans back against his door. “She’s a rescue, right?”

“Kind of?” Galo rubs the back of his head. “I got her from a breeder living near the industrial district. There was a pretty bad apartment fire there, and the breeder couldn’t get all the puppies out. Long story short, I rescued Matoi. Once we were safe, she started whining like crazy if I wasn’t holding her, so the breeder let me keep her.” He pats Matoi’s head affectionately. “The rest is history.”

“That’s a good story,” Lio says, heart clenching. Internally, he begins cursing every deity who thought it would be fun to introduce Lio to a literal puppy-rescuing firefighter. This guy is too good to be true. If he’d just been hot, that would’ve been one thing, but he’s not just hot. He’s also friendly, and kind, and genuine, and… Lio hasn’t had a crush since high school, but he thinks that maybe— He might actually— 

“Well, I’ll see you later!” Galo says. “Gotta get to work soon. And it sounds like you had a pretty rough day.”

Lio is once again hyper-aware of how much he probably looks like shit right now. “Uh, yeah,” he says awkwardly. “I’ll see you later.”

As soon as he’s alone and safely inside his apartment, Lio pulls out his phone to text Gueira and Meis.  _ Just learned he rescued his dog from a burning building when she was a puppy _ , he types.  _ Please kill me _ .

His friends—the bastards—do no such thing. Instead, they just send him a series of hearts and eggplant emojis. Lio sighs.

This is really starting to become a problem.

▲▲▲

Lio complained a lot about the bachelorette party, but the truth is, it could have been a lot worse. For example: the following Friday night, the club catches on fire.

Closing time was half an hour ago, and Lio finally managed to usher a group of very drunk, very rowdy men out of the club. They were being a lot more aggressive than Burnish’s patrons usually are, yelling at him as if kicking them out at closing time was some kind of Geneva convention violation. Lio doesn’t think too much of it at the time. It does cross his mind again fifteen minutes later, however, when Meis asks, “do you guys smell smoke?”

Fuck. It’s too early for this shit. He’s supposed to be off the fucking clock by now.

They find the source of the fire pretty quickly. Someone must have broken the window of the VIP room, dumped some alcohol in there, and tossed in a lighter, because the entire lounge is in flames. As soon as they open the door to the room, a torrent of smoke flares out, and they’re barely able to close the door again before the heat of the fire becomes too much for them to handle. 

“We should—we should probably leave, right?” Gueira asks as they stare at the glowing smoke pouring underneath the door. 

“And call the fire department, maybe,” Meis adds. “Like… I don’t think we’re going to be able to put this out.”

Lio is already dialing the emergency line. “On it,” he says.

“We probably have time to get the cash from the bar register and from the front,” says Gueira. “I know insurance covers this kind of shit, but I still haven’t been paid for last week.”

Meis slaps his back. The two of them start walking towards the main club floor. “Good thinking. Who knows when the insurance payout will come through.”

The phone finishes dialing, and Lio hears a woman’s voice through the speaker.  _ “Emergency services, what is your emergency?” _

“Hi, we’re at Burnish—” Lio says, and then stops. A sudden realization hits him. His blood runs cold. “Guys,” he says urgently. “Guys, the gas main—the gas main is back there, we need to get the  _ fuck—” _

And the door blows outwards.

Lio is knocked back into the wall  _ hard. _ His ears are ringing. It’s hot. He coughs and blinks, trying to clear his eyes, but they sting like a motherfucker and it’s hard to breathe. He sinks lower against the wall. Fuck, his back really hurts, and he still can’t see. He can hear spitting and crackling and the  _ whoom whoom whoom  _ of flames somewhere to his left. The heat in that direction is nearly unbearable. Blindly, he starts crawling away.

“Meis?” he calls out as loud as he can manage. “Gueira?” The smoke burns his throat every time he breathes.

“Lio! A frantic voice—Meis, he thinks. “Lio, I’m with Gueira. He hit his head. Follow my voice—”

There’s a loud  _ crash _ up ahead, and Lio feels the heat of another explosion. Shit. The fire must have followed the gas line. He manages to blink one eye open long enough to look at what’s in front of him, but all he sees is a wall of flames. “Meis?” he yells. “Meis?!”

“I’m here!” says Meis’s voice. “I’m okay.”

“Get out,” Lio shouts back. “Get Gueira out. Go!”

“But you’re—”

_ “Go!”  _

He doesn’t hear a reply—the flames are roaring now, and the air is so thick with smoke that it feels as though the oxygen is being sucked from his lungs. It’s so fucking hot in here. Is this it? Is this how he fucking dies? On the floor in the club he works at? What a bullshit way to go.

He crawls towards the only hallway that doesn’t feel like it’s actively burning yet and tries to keep moving, but he’s too dizzy, and his entire body feels sluggish. He blinks his eyes a few times. The edges of his vision are going black and it’s still too smoky to keep his eyes open for long. He’s suffocating.

Then he hears a familiar voice calling faintly from somewhere past the flames. “Lio?” the voice calls. “Lio? Where are you?”

Of course. Of fucking course it’s Galo. Maybe it’s the lack of oxygen, or the adrenaline, or the hysteria brought on by the terrifying prospect of imminent death, but for some reason, Lio finds himself smiling.

“Over—” He coughs. “Over here!”

He sees a tall figure walking through the fire, and suddenly there’s Galo in full uniform. He’s wearing a mask, and Lio can barely see his face, but he knows it’s him. Even if he hadn’t recognized his voice, there aren’t many people with a shoulders-to-waist ratio like Galo’s.

“Lio,” Galo says. “Lio—can you walk?” 

“Nnh,” Lio says. Galo must take that for a no, because the next thing he knows, he’s being lifted into Galo’s arms and carried further down the hallway. The air is clearer down here, and the heat isn’t quite so unbearable. Then he hears the sound of a door opening, and they’re outside in the parking lot outside the club. 

Lio breathes in a shaky lungful of fresh air and coughs for what feels like five minutes straight. Galo takes him to an EMT and sits at his side while the EMT gives him an oxygen mask and checks him for burns. Luckily, he’s fine—just a bit of smoke inhalation. When it’s clear that Lio is well enough to manage the oxygen mask on his own, she turns her attention back to Gueira. Seems like he got a pretty bad concussion.

It takes a few more minutes before Lio manages to catch his breath enough to speak, but when he does, he turns to Galo and rasps, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he grins. “Saving people is, well. It’s kind of my job.”

Lio bumps his shoulder. “You literally just saved my fucking life. Don’t downplay it.”

“All right, all right. You’re welcome.” Galo bumps his shoulder back a little hesitantly, then adds, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

In a few hours, Lio will start to process how close he just came to dying. He’ll have a whole existential crisis about it, probably, and begin to rethink all his current life choices. But Lio isn’t there yet. The existential crisis is a problem for future Lio. Right now, sitting next to Galo in the back of an ambulance, looking at Galo’s too-broad shoulders in his firefighting gear and his sweaty face smudged with soot and his stupid, stupid hair all messed up from being smothered by his helmet— Well. All of that makes it pretty easy for Lio to come to a decision.

“Do you want to go out?” Lio asks. 

“Yes,” Galo says immediately. His eyes are wide and earnest, his grin a little hopeful. “Like a date, right?”

“Yes. Like a date.”

“I— Yeah. Yes,” Galo laughs. “I was actually just going to ask you out.”

“Too bad. I asked first.”

“Can I kiss you?”

Galo is grinning at him, wide and genuine and just a little goofy. Behind them, through the sounds of shouting and flames and fire hoses, the fire is dying down. The firefighters have the situation under control. Everyone is okay, if a little banged up, and— Oh shit. Lio doesn’t have to go to work tomorrow.

“Yeah,” Lio says. “You can kiss me.” He tilts his chin, leans up, and presses his lips against Galo’s. 

They plan their date for next Wednesday. They’re going to a Galo’s favorite pizza place on the other side of town. Lio’s going to take them on his motorcycle.

He can’t fucking wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are always appreciated <3


End file.
